


lifeboat

by quensty



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Multi, edit: i do not condone any homophobia sexism racism etc in the tv show, i simply liked the idea and have melded it into something i hope isn't offensive in any way, there's also some side action of jerejean renison and erik/nicky, this is like pain without plot instead of porn, u don't have to have watched sense8 to catch the drift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2018-11-06 20:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11043723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/pseuds/quensty
Summary: “I thought you said you weren’t allowed to see me anymore.” Andrew looks up, then in that exact moment, Nathaniel is back in Potsdam, rain trailing down his neck and into his shirt. Andrew’s hair is plastered to his forehead in long, dark ribbons. “Either you were lying or you’re breaking the rules.”Breaking the rules.For a second, he hears it in his mother’s voice. Goosebumps rise on his skin.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bigeminal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigeminal/gifts).



> a few things i'd like to explain:  
> 1) i made all of this up,,,i made up so much of it. i'd never seen sense8 when i started this. all the info i had from it was scenes i'd seen on tumblr and a quick wiki read-through. by the time i actually watched some of it, i'd already decided on a course of action. so obviously i decided i didn't care and continued. i also took liberty with the foxes background just bc i can.  
> 2) you honestly do not have to know a thing about sense8 canon to understand this. NOTHING. i tried to make it so that if all you know about it is what you're reading here, you're good. this is also briefly mentioned in the tags, but this is also a minor jerejean, renison, and erik/nicky fic bc i have no self-restraint.  
> 3) there are some warnings for this fic both in this chapter and upcoming ones that are similar to canon: some tough mental stuff (depression, anxiety, ptsd), vague references to torture, drug/physical abuse, homophobic language, and the added bonus of referenced poverty. if there's anything new, i'll make sure to tell you guys about it.
> 
> edit: i do not condone any homophobia, racism, sexism, etc. in the tv show. i honestly just liked the idea of it but do think it could've been managed MUCH better.  
> 

Rising Edgar Allen Exy Star Makes a Startling Debute -  SportsDaily.com 

Leandro Rodrigo Labeled as ‘The Freshman to Watch’ This Season -  nytimes.com 

Reasons Why Edgar Allen’s New Defense Line-Up Has Everyone Speechless -  Buzzfeed 

 

_CNN: Well, the new line up certainly worked wonders for you tonight. All underclassmen players: some would call that a bad bet, yet the Tampa Bay Sharks could hardly put a dent in the defense line._

_TETSUJI MORIYAMA: I was confident in my player’s ability to stand their ground._

_CNN: Can this newfound synchrony between the players have anything to do with Leandro Rodrigo?_

_TETSUJI MORIYAMA: They have become of one mind. It has to do with all of them._

**Tetsuji Moriyama, Edgar Allen Coach, On the Raven’s Home Game to CNN News.**

 

***

 

Nathaniel is seven years old the first time he Crosses.

There was a whole two days that built up to it: a pulsing just under the dip of his cranium, like bones were unstitching together and trying to fold in on themselves. There was a half-empty bottle of painkillers in his parent’s bathroom cupboard, and Nathaniel hid a handful in his pockets before sliding quietly back to his own room, but they didn’t do much to ease any of the pain. His mother noticed, eventually, because Nathaniel’s never been much good at hiding anything from her and because she never misses a thing: a shot, an attack, and signs that situations are festering without her knowing about them.

“Abram.” Her hands were in his hair, combing it back and straight the way Nathan likes it. Her fingers slid around his chin and lifted. She meant: _what aren’t you telling me?_

“My head hurts bad.”

“Hurts bad how?”

“Hurts like.” He shook his head, which only made it worse, bile curling up his throat. “Like my head’s trying to make more room. I don’t like it.”

She’d stayed silent for a very long time, long enough that Nathaniel’s body had started to tremble with the anticipation that he’d just said the wrong thing. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers from around his face and said, “Do not tell your father.”

Her face was carefully blank. The air around them rattled. “Okay,” he agreed, as if he’d ever had the intention of telling his father anything.

Afterwards, as his mother left the bathroom, Nathaniel thought he caught a glimpse of something in the mirror – blonde hair and a glint of hazel, like a blade in the sun – but then he blinked and the only thing staring back at him was his reflection.

Wednesday night, squirming and feverish under the covers, it happens: one minute Nathaniel is lying on his side in his own bed in Baltimore, he turns, and suddenly he’s sitting on the floor of a small, dim room he doesn’t recognize. The first thing he notices is a coat that smells like cigarette smoke sticking to one side of his face. The second thing he notices is a blonde boy sitting on the on the opposite side, knees pulled up to his chin and frowning.

He doesn’t kick at Nathaniel or make any loud noises, so Nathaniel does his best to shove the coat away and says, “Er, hi.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Nathaniel. Who are you? Is this a dream?”

The boy’s face twists. “Andrew,” he says, and Nathaniel, surprised, realizes he somehow already knew before he asked. The name settles like a familiar taste in his mouth. “And this isn’t a dream.”

“Then where am I?”

“Palo Alto. What are you doing here?”

Nathaniel blinks. “I don’t know. I was trying to go to sleep before I came here.” He squints at nothing in particular, thinking seriously for a moment. “Palo Alto – is that California? Am I in California?” Andrew nods as Nathaniel looks around the dark room, not really knowing what he’s expecting: for it to be warmer, maybe. He’s heard California doesn’t get snow. “I’ve never been outside Baltimore before.”

“Yes, you have,” Andrew says. “I’ve seen you around the home a few times. I thought I was seeing things.”

Nathaniel very much doubts that. He’s not allowed to leave the house without permission.

“I wasn’t lying,” says Nathaniel. “I’ve never been here before.”

“I wasn’t lying either.” Andrew tilts his head a bit at him, considering. “You’re hair was brushed back the first time.”

Nathaniel is about to open his mouth to argue, but then he remembers: what he thought had been a trick of the light on the foggy bathroom mirror, there and gone as quickly as it came; being in the basement, poised ready and low and waiting for Lola to strike first, polished blade in nail polished hand, blinking, and then for a second being in a yard he didn't recognize with wind blowing in his face; and this constant displaced feeling in his gut, like there was a hook just behind his belly button that was trying to pull him in a different direction.

“Has your head been hurting?” Nathaniel asks, somewhat abruptly, by the way Andrew stands straighter against the wall.

He falters. “Yes.”

“Hurting how?”

It’s the first thing that comes to his head to say, a part of him back at home with Mary, the kind of look on her face that means she’s looking for an answer. Nathaniel tries for it, tilting his mouth downwards and making his back seem ramrod straight. He’s never talked to a stranger before, no one other than the tutor that comes to teach Neil during the day and always seems a bit scared of him, much less someone his own age. He feels remarkably out of his element.

Andrew says, “Like it’s trying to hollow out.”

“Me too,” he admits, and stretches out his legs. “What are you doing in a closet?”

“Waiting,” he says, and adds at the quelling look Nathaniel must have on his face, “I don't like sleeping with the other boys anymore.”

“Kind of uncomfortable.”

“Then leave.”

Nathaniel shrugs. “Don't know how.”

“Then stop talking.”

He doesn't know how late it is in California – different states are in different time zones, Nathaniel knows. It was late back in Baltimore, nearing midnight, and he can feel his exhaustion like liquid metal being poured over his bones. He should be getting to sleep. His father will be getting back from a business trip tomorrow morning, which means his mother isn’t going to let him sleep in.

Nathaniel can see the tired slope of Andrew’s shoulders, his eyelids drooping, but he makes no move to settle and, to be perfectly honest, neither does Nathaniel. All he does is curl into himself, chin on his knees, and keep his eyes open.

 

***

 

Meanwhile, across the country, a girl with long, blonde hair in a tailored, glimmering dress appears in a small house that reeks of cigarette smoke. When she sees another girl sitting at the foot of a bed, washing away at a gash on her knee with nothing but a bottle of water and a towel, she's so dumbfounded that she blurts out the first thing that comes to her head, which is _blood doesn't wash well out of white skirts_ because, frankly, she doesn’t have much experience talking to people her own age either. Then, for a moment, like somebody on the other end of a fishing line is reeling them in, the blonde girl is back under a cave in Kauai. This time, she’s not alone.

Farther away, on a separate continent, a little boy sitting with his toes buried in the sand becomes two. The one who was in the middle of having a perfectly pleasant lunch halfway across the world immediately swears, jerking his legs out mindlessly and, consequently, ends up throwing sand in the other boy’s face. It takes quite some time before they’re both settled enough to bother asking any questions.

( _Where am I?_ The American asks, looking around him, not believing he’s still in Frostbite, Illinois: it is much warmer here than Chicago.

 _France,_ the boy answers irritably, rubbing sea salt from his eyes and watching as the other boy’s mouth forms an ‘o’. _Marseille._ )

In Los Lunas, New Mexico, a boy is rushing through the streets during morning traffic, backpack dangling half off his shoulders, shoelaces flying loose around his ankles, though he hardly thinks of stopping to right himself. If his mother finds out he was late to class because he slept in, Lord help him. He fidgets restlessly at a red light, counting down the seconds until he can run across the intersection, when a girl beside him steps out into traffic without any care at all. He shoots his arm out, startled, a _hey, watch out!_ spilling from his mouth. The girl turns to look at him just as a car races through.

He turns his body to the side, looks away – waits for the sound of tires screeching to a halt, people yelling, someone hitting the ground hard and fast – but it never comes. The traffic light turns red and people around him shuffle into the street, unaware of how loud the boy’s heart is pounding in his chest, and there’s no sign of the girl at all until days later, once the boy thinks he might’ve imagined the whole thing.

It started here.

 

***

 

“You're going to tell me you think this is a bad idea.”

Allison doesn't turn around to look at her, but her shoulders hunch up like she wants to. “Hello, Natalie.”

“Yeah, hi.” She tells Allison, “If you’re going to lecture me on my choice, you can keep it to yourself. I don't care what you think.”

“I don't think anything. I know it's a bad idea.”

“You don't have much room to talk.” As far as Natalie is concerned, Allison has been making bad choices ever since they met. She steals sips of wine from adult’s glasses when they aren't looking, wears the bright red lipstick she finds in her mother’s bag, and always manages to pin something she did on someone else, just to see how everyone reacts. Just because she can.

It used to infuriate Natalie something awful. How could someone with money and family purposefully try to sabotage it? She hadn't even known about that kind of luxury until Allison.

Natalie told her this when she caught her mixing red dye in a woman’s shampoo. It stained her fingertips like blood. _You're the only person in the world with a perfect life that doesn't want it._

 _You don't know anything about my life,_ Allison said. Primly. _And I’m bored._

 _I know enough,_ Natalie had sneered, feral, before promptly Crossing back to the subway station in Detroit, ripping her ticket out of the machine, and stomping away.

“This is _dangerous_ , Natalie.” Allison stands from where she was sitting on the bench. Her skirt billows beautifully around her, long hair tucked into a braid. Natalie doesn't know if the tremor in her clenched fists are from anger or the cold. “Doesn't that scare you?”

 _Danger_ has become a backdrop in Natalie’s life, a constant thrum under her skin. She walks into a room and always makes sure to stand between everyone else and the door. The gangsters at her school like her because they say she knows how to bite. No one asks why.

She isn't stupid, she knows what it means to accept what they've offered her, knows what it means for one of them to tell her _we’re a pack of dogs, sweetie: we’re a family, but we’re not very nice._

Natalie, for all that Allison scolds her for being reckless, isn’t: she’s desperate.

“I know that,” says Natalie. “Don’t think I don’t know that.”

“Then listen to me–”

“No,” she snaps. “You listen to me. I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand–”

“What wouldn’t I understand?” There’s true anger in her eyes now, glowing; metal over a flame. “Who can understand better than me?”

It's just been Allison and Natalie for so long. Allison and Natalie, tolerating each other because neither of them have many other options. Allison and Natalie, somehow reaching a point between them when they don't scowl every time they catch sight of one another. Allison and Natalie, the only other person in the world who they think of as some kind of friend.

Natalie is not the better person to stay calm. Her whole body flares. “Oh, you with your perfect rich parents and your big house. Please, Allison, what do you expect me to think?”

A laugh startles out of Allison’s throat. It's not a nice laugh. “My perfect parents? Are you kidding me right now?”

“They let you walk all over them. Did you expect the same thing from me? I'm not going to make myself into a doormat for you, Allison.”

“I walk all over them,” Allison echoes. “This is the most – are you even listening to yourself? You don't know _anything_ about me.” Allison’s steps one, two, three steps closer. When she jabs a finger into Natalie’s chest, it almost feels real. They're so close, they’re breaths tangle together in clouds between them. “Did you know I play Exy?”

Of course, Natalie didn’t know. There’s no way she could have known, which is also why, immediately after she thought so, the part of her that’s not just her anymore places her in a memory.

Sensation hits her all at once: people screaming, bright lights, old pennies filling her mouth. Natalie is in an Exy court, watching from the other side of the glass as a player races towards the goal and, in the last minute, someone from the other team snatches the ball mid-throw. Natalie nearly misses it it happens so fast. A siren sounds before anyone can even move.

Time passes, the stadium gradually clearing, people gathering their things from the stands, and a blonde, freshly showered girl runs out of the locker rooms, bag bouncing enthusiastically against her thigh. The Allison in the memory looks around frantically, looking happier than Natalie has ever seen her; she can hardly look away.

Allison stands at Natalie’s elbow, her eyes dark and serious. Shuffling around people, Natalie watches as the other Allison finally spots her parents by the bleachers and smiles wide. It’s a standstill between them: Allison, waiting for a sign of approval; her parents, standing rigid and blank. The smile slowly disintegrates, crumbling, a shaky exhale. They take only one last glance at her before they leave.

When they’re both back in the Detroit cold, looking over the park, she says, “They’ve never been happy with anything I’ve ever done. I don’t think they even really like me.”

Natalie knows she isn’t looking for comfort. She looks at Natalie and thinks _I know what it’s like to raise yourself._ Just like how Natalie had to forge signatures for her emergency contacts at school because her mother was wasting away on the couch, Allison had to do it because her father was never in the same country, and her mother was too busy going out and drinking wine from crystal.

“Tell me again,” says Allison, her voice gone to silk; the argument drained from her, like having to stoop so low as to bring up her parents to win an argument has made her cross a very important line. “Tell me that I wouldn’t understand.”

A long moment passes where neither of them say anything. Maybe if Natalie was anybody else, she would feel bad for what she's done and continues to do. Except she's who she is and she doesn't.

Natalie’s jaw clenches. “It's my decision.”

“Yeah. It is,” is all that’s said. Then Allison closes her eyes and Crosses, slow and resigned.

 

***

 

The same night after Nathaniel witnesses Nathan swing a cleaver towards a man on his knees, Andrew tells him to stop talking to him.

Nathaniel feels the words hit him more than he hears it, tries to find a reason somewhere on Andrew’s face. He doesn’t find any before Andrew leaves him, standing shocked and hurt. To be completely honest, though, he doesn’t have much time to think about it because on that same night, Mary pulls him out of bed as she fills a travel bag full of clothes and, Nathaniel is surprised to see, piles of cash. Then they run.

She doesn’t tell him why they’re running, not really, and Nathaniel doesn’t think to ask. The only thing she offers is almost a week later, while they’re both moving around in a motel bathroom just outside of Stratford.

“You cannot talk to your Sensates anymore, Nathaniel.”

He stops rubbing brown hair dye through his curls to stare. He’s never heard the word Sensate before, but it isn’t difficult to understand who she’s talking about. A clear, vivid memory of Andrew pops into his mind. He remembers Andrew telling him about the woman who adopted him, Cass, and about how he had his own room now. How he could sleep in a bed without waking up every ten minutes. Then: _stop looking for me,_ he’d told Nathaniel. _Stop coming._

“Okay,” he says because, he figures, it really shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

 

***

 

Nathaniel will find out later that the same night he and his mother were trying to get on the first plane outside the country, a plane from Marseille was touching down in the same airport.

They’d missed each other by a hair fracture. Maybe if they hadn't, their lives would have been gone very differently. (He’ll think about this years later, sitting on a spot in the sunny Marseille beach with sand sticking to his bare legs. The puckered, scarred skin of Jean’s back will glimmer with sea salt and heat, and Neil Josten will wonder when they will start feeling like victories.)

 

***

 

“You’re Nicholas.” The voice echoes off the walls, the high arched ceilings, the purple-veined marble floor.

“You can call me Nicky.” He spares a glance over his shoulder. “You’re Nathaniel.”

A wince. Nathaniel clenches his teeth and says nothing.

He doesn’t know how he ended up here: three years have given Nathaniel practice on controlling his Crossings. Mostly that’d meant Andrew over the years, both of them agreeing on a rendezvous hour every night. Sometimes Nathaniel was the one that would Cross, materializing from thin air on Andrew’s bed, other times it was Andrew that Nathaniel found wedged on his windowsill. It’d worked. Become a habit, even.

But that was almost six months ago, now. Andrew had put up a mental wall between them that Nathaniel wouldn’t know how to work around even if he tried. His mother would kill him if she found out Nathaniel was deliberately trying to reach his hand out for someone to take. What Nathaniel was doing right now was not allowed.

But there’s a part of him that misses Andrew desperately, all-consuming; overwhelming in the same way someone misses shade in the desert. So he doesn't try to leave.

Nathaniel’s never been here before. The church is the size of his yard, elegant and polished down until it gleams. Stained glass casts light across the floors. Murals decorate the walls, looming.

“Not to be rude,” says Nicky, wiping his running nose with his sleeve, “but this isn't really a good time for me.”

Distantly, Nathaniel thinks this isn’t a very good time for him, either, but doesn't bother answering. There’s a sick, lingering feeling in Nathaniel’s stomach he can't place; he feels it like a hangnail as he moves to take a seat a careful foot away from Nicky on the pew. The squeaking of his shoe might as well be a gunshot in the way it shatters the still silence of the church.

He watches as Nicky runs the back of his hand over his face, trying to hide that he's crying. Nathaniel’s shoulders go tense, averting his eyes; he's not sure what to do. The only people he's ever talked to is Andrew and Natalie, though only once, and Andrew never cried in front of him.

“What is this place?”

“San Clamente.” Nicky clears his throat, pointedly not looking anywhere but ahead, and wraps his arms tightly around himself. His voice, when he speaks again, is a canoe on a lake: unsteady, trembling, always too close to tipping over. “We come here every day at least once. My mom likes to say waiting six days to see God every week is like waiting six days for a glass of water.”

Everything there feels unnaturally still. Everything is precisely in its place, measured down to the last linen thread. It reminds him of his father’s house in Baltimore when investigators stood at their doorstep. Nathaniel doesn’t see what could possibly be refreshing in a place like that.

“Sure,” he says.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not the one you need to convince.”

Again, silence spills over them like velvet. Nicky sighs. “You’re right,” then goes, “you’re not.”

Suddenly, as suddenly as being thrown out of a moving car, Nathaniel feels thrown into motion, and he blinks away the fog in his head as he takes in loud music, a thrum in his sternum; people around him laugh loudly, dancing in a space cleared away by tables. He watches all of this like watching a dream from underwater; out of place.

A woman sitting at his elbow hums, red-lipped and mouth closed around her glass. _But where is Sara, Luther?_ she asks a man across the table. _She should have been here by now._

The man’s face grows chilly while, for some inexplicable reason, every part of Nathaniel seems to constrict. But he recognizes this kind of stillness; it's the same kind he took whenever Nathan was in the same room as him. _It’s of no matter where my sister is. The party will go on without her._

 _Her son told her he was gay a few days ago,_ a different man offers around his beer bottle. His face is flushed, eyes opaque. He tips his head back, bottle at the seam of his lips. _Lord help them._

The woman’s mouth twists. _That’s hardly an appropriate thing to say about a boy, John._

_What would you like me to say, Carmen?_

The dream falls away, stripped like paint, with Nicky’s fingers curled vice-like around his elbow. Nathaniel read somewhere once that infants, when they feel danger, wrap themselves into a ribbon. In a world that makes them an easy target, they know to grit their teeth and protect everything important. When it comes down to it, they know how to hang on by their fingernails.

A canoe: an illusion of stability, always too close to tipping over.

Nathaniel blinks, says, “You hate it here,” just as he realizes the sick feeling spreading like a disease in his stomach isn't his, just like the memory wasn't his and the smooth wood under his fingertips isn't his to feel either.

Nicky recoils so harshly, Nathaniel might as well have hit him. Then, very slowly, very carefully, a balloon flitting away, he admits: “I don't know what I think.”

Nathaniel can understand that. There was a man wearing a flag over his chest screaming after his mother once, calling her a killer. Calling her ugly things he's only ever heard when his father’s temper has set the house on fire. Mary: her gaze set firmly ahead. Nathaniel: angling his chin, trying to get a look over his shoulder, but then she was there gripping his wrist so tightly that his bones grinded together. _Don’t ever look back, Abram._

“Aren't you going to say something?”

Nathaniel looks at him. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don't know.” Frustrated. “That I'm overreacting? That this is weird?”

Nathaniel stops. Thinks. “People have hurt you,” he goes with, which is just about everything he has to say.

“Is that it?”

“That's the only part that matters.”

 

***

 

“Kind of strange,” Jeremy says. He swerves along with Jean through the crowd of people, careful to not touch anyone as he passes, though he hardly has to. It's not like he’s actually in an airport a few miles outside of Marseille, a suitcase in one hand and a boarding pass in the other. In reality, he’s pretending to study for his geography quiz in a library all the way back in Chicago. “I don’t know any French.”

Jean is jittery, which is mostly the reason why Jeremy is here in the first place. He’s been acting skittish all week. Jeremy desperately wants to ask why, but the first time he tried, Jean snapped at him to mind his own business.

They both know Jeremy could easily stretch out his mind like fingers and wrap them around Jean’s secrets, open them up as easily as a package. That kind of thing used to happen on accident, when they first met. It’d be too simple. But Jean said no, so Jeremy keeps to himself.

Jean says, “So?”

“You don’t speak any English.”

He scowls and straightens, defensive. “I know some.”

“Not enough to hold up a conversation with a native speaker,” he points out. “So, realistically, we shouldn’t be able to understand each other.”

“What about any of this is realistic?” A woman shuffling by stares a little too long at them. Jean pulls a phone out of his pocket and holds it against his ear. As they move down the line, Jean’s hands tremble in his pockets. Jeremy can practically taste Jean’s heartbeat all the way to his teeth.

“You’re nervous,” says Jeremy, to which Jean answers through clenched teeth, “You’re one to talk.”

It’s a low blow and they both know it. Jeremy presses his lips into a line and says nothing, but he doesn’t leave. It’s quiet between them long enough that they get through the line and towards the terminals before Jean speaks up again. “I’m sorry. That was the wrong thing to say.”

Jeremy inhales. Exhales. “It’s all right.”

“My parents are sending me away to America to play Exy.”

Jeremy looks over at him and knows better than to crack a joke. It sounds like it cuts up the inside of Jean’s mouth to say it. Vulnerability trickles down his chin and stains his clothes. If he says the wrong thing, Jean will sever whatever hand he’s stretching out quicker than Jeremy can blink.

“I have to take a test when I get there. No matter what happens,” he says, “I won’t be able to come back home.”

Home: seagulls soaring over the ocean’s surface, white feathers against a white sky. Home: French spoken in words wrapped in silk that slips off the tongue. Jeremy knows Jean. He knows the way he hoards the memories deep in his chest, inside his ribcage.

What kind of people, Jeremy thinks, would send a boy away from home with no chance of coming back?

“The kind that have a lot more to lose,” Jean answers.

 

***

 

Two weeks later, Jean tells Jeremy he doesn’t want to talk to him anymore.

“Is this a joke?” Jeremy asks. He can hardly believe what he just heard. “Why would you say that? Jean, what’s going on?”

“It’s too dangerous to talk here. If they find out, we’ll both be as good as dead.”

“What? No, wait -- Jean, stop!” Jeremy reaches out and grabs Jean by the arm. Both of them thrum from surprise: they’ve never touched before. They didn’t think it was possible. Desperation makes anything possible. Desperation makes you brave, so Jeremy wraps his fingers around Jean’s elbow, vicelike, and doesn’t let himself let go.

“I’m not going to risk this.” _I’m not going to risk you,_ is what he means to say. The fact that Jeremy doesn’t have to make an effort to Read him shows just how quickly control is crumbling away from the both of them. _You’re my only friend and I refuse to put you in the line of fire._

“We stick together. That’s what we’re meant to do.” Jeremy’s voice has never come out like that. He nearly trips over his own words trying to get them out as quickly as he can. “Don’t be an idiot, Jean. Don’t leave me.”

_You’re my only friend, too, and losing you sounds just as bad as losing my head. I’ll lose my mind if I lose you, don’t you understand?_

“Goodbye, Jeremy,” says Jean. It doesn’t matter how hard Jeremy grips him, doesn’t matter how badly he tries to keep him there. Connecting with another Sensate has to be an open door on both sides.

Jean Crosses, and no matter what Jeremy does after that, the path that used to lead him towards Jean ends cold.

 

***

 

.

 

***

 

…

 

***

 

Andrew.

  

***

 

Hey, Andrew.

Hey.

 

 ...

 

Will you let me in?

Andrew.

 

***

 

the blockers make me feel sick, like my mind is half-numb. hollow. empty. and most of the time i don't know if i’m not here at the right times or if you haven't come out at all. is this a sensate thing, feeling irrevocably tied to someone because i hate it. i wish i could tear it out of me like a cavity. i hate it as much as you do but here i am anyways and –

can you open the door? please.

 

***

 

I hate that word.

 

***

 

Nicky doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

His room is just as bad as he thought it was going to be: white walls; white floors; white sheets. His clothes and luggage are the only color in the whole room, empty and bare. The woman who brought him here had given him a smile and a small praying book before she left.

Now, Nicky sets it on the small nightstand by the window and refuses to touch it again.

Dan shows up on the third day, sitting at the end of his bed. She looks uncomfortable. “What is this place?” She spots the open suitcase on the floor. Her eyes turn back towards him, wide. “Did you…?”

“Yes,” says Nicky. He’s surprised he got any words out of his throat at all. They seem to claw their way out, leaving the taste of blood in his mouth. “It didn’t go very well. I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

***

 

Nathaniel Crosses into a jail cell: gray walls, gray floors, gray sheets. A blonde boy in an almost-gray suit.

“Well,” says Nathaniel. “This is new.”

Across the cell, book in his lap, Andrew responds, dry as dust, “You’ve been waiting to say that.”

It’d been exactly what Andrew had said to him less than a week ago, eyes hooked where Nathaniel had a hole in his side. A bullet wound, caught in the dead of night in northern Michigan. When Andrew found him, Nathaniel was leaning his elbows against an empty public bathroom at the bus station and trying to remember how to breathe. _This is new,_ he’d said to the blood pooling over the dirty floor, then to the new color of his hair, his different set of eyes. Nathaniel thought he’d been hallucinating from blood loss.

Nathaniel’s mouth twitches upwards. “You’ve been waiting for me to say it.”

“I thought you said you weren’t allowed to see me anymore.” Andrew looks up, then in that exact moment, Nathaniel is back in Potsdam, rain trailing down his neck and into his shirt. Andrew’s hair is plastered to his forehead in long, dark ribbons. “Either you were lying or you’re breaking the rules.”

 _Breaking the rules._ For a second, he hears it in his mother’s voice. Goosebumps rise on his skin.

Nathaniel knows his mother doesn't like Nathaniel talking to his Sensates: she told him so that first day they decided to shed their skins. She’ll smack him until he's bruised if she finds out he disobeyed her -- Nathaniel _knows_ this, he _knows._ Every time he sees Andrew or Nicky or Natalie, a voice in the back of his mind throws things around, frantic, tries to pry him away. _This is not allowed. Go away. Leave. Close the door._

Still, he stays and doesn't know why. He should leave. He should tell his mother it’s gotten worse. Still, he stays.

Nathaniel shrugs, schooling his expression into something carefully casual. He’s grown better at hiding things since he last met Andrew “Take your pick.”

But Nathaniel forgets that he isn't the only one who’s changed since he was ten years old. Andrew looks at him steadily, the set of his face unreadable. Then, without ever taking his eyes off of him, Andrew says, “You have your foot in the door.”

“What?”

“You are breaking the rules,” says Andrew, “and are ready to leave before you’re caught.”

They’re thrown back in a cell only four paces wide and Nathaniel’s shoulders hike up. It’s been a long time since anyone’s caught Nathaniel on a lie other than his mother. He can’t help his spine tensing, uncomfortable with being caught under scrutiny. Andrew, on the other hand, leaning serpentlike against the wall, looks perfectly at ease.

“Is it that important?”

“It is if your mistake will fall on me.”

“You’re already in juvie. Besides, do you really think I’d put you in danger like that?”

“If it meant you stayed in the clear?” Andrew examined him. “I’m undecided.”

“Why are you here if you don’t trust me?”

Andrew doesn’t answer him. He looks upwards and, suddenly, they’re back in Potsdam. Warm rain pours down, and both of them watch as people shuffle around carrying bags of food from the outside markets. A group of friends shift past Nathaniel, laughing and talking loudly as they shove food into each other’s faces. He watches for a beat longer before turning away.

“Ever been to Germany?” asks Nathaniel.

Andrew stares.

 

***

 

(“The same reason you are,” Andrew answers him, much, much later, once the rain has cleared and the sun casts lazy and orange across the streets.

By that point, Nathaniel had completely forgotten about the conversation. Now that the hours had passed, Nathaniel kept catching himself scanning the area. His mother said she’d be back by sunset before leaving him at the plaza, close enough to their hideout and crowded enough to lose someone if it came down to it. She was either still negotiating with the man that could make their history near untraceable and, possibly, smuggle them high-grade Blockers while they were low on supply, or she’d cornered him into a bathroom and had a gun to his chin.

Either option was likely, and Nathaniel was told to run at the first sign of trouble.

When he realized Andrew had said something, he spared him a glance edgewise, lost. “What?”

“Why I’m here,” Andrew offers.

“You don’t know me well enough to know that,” Nathaniel answers absently. He peeks another glance over his shoulder. A couple sidled up are talking lowly under their breath by a pastry stand. A different man a few feet away is examining vegetables.

“Ah,” Andrew goes, “exactly,” and Nathaniel does look at him properly that time.)

 

***

 

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she says. “I can see right through you. You’re dying to talk about it to someone.”

“That doesn’t mean it has to be you, Dan. Leave me alone.”

“That’s the whole problem!” Tension builds, carbon dioxide under a soda cap. “You’re not letting me help you. You won’t tell me about what they’re saying to you.” Her mouth thins into a straight, serious line. “Your eyes always catch on that woman’s wedding ring, and you wonder how anybody could possibly go home and look another human being in the eye after what she's done.”

“Dan, stop.”

She doesn’t stop. “You want to break out of this place - you want to break this place, brick by brick. You want to hate your parents for bringing you here. But you can’t make yourself do it. You hate yourself, - which isn’t okay, Nicky. You think - “

“ _Stop_ Reading me,” he snaps. Loudly.

She startles, pulling away. She hadn’t even noticed she was doing it. Somehow. Everything goes very, very quiet.

After a moment, Nicky deflates, shrinks back into himself. He looks as exhausted as ever, like it’s taking everything he has to stay upright. Dan knows what that feels like. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I shouldn’t have shouted.”

“I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have done that.“

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

Silence.

“I’m really worried about you. You can’t see what you look like.”  

A sigh, eyelids falling closed. “Don’t be.”

 

***

 

Jeremy can’t think. He feels the silence like a dead line where Jean used to be. He stretches his mind as far as it’ll go and searches, sometimes, when anxiety pulls at him during the times he counted on Jean to appear and pull him out of it. He finds nothing for too long, and eventually the habit fades away.

High school comes along, and with it so does sectionals for his Exy team. He doesn’t mean to Reach -- maybe it’s because he’s so nervous he feels like vomiting, maybe it’s a simple mistake, but when Jeremy puts his hands shakily around the ceramic sink in the boy’s bathroom (breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth, counting to three, and doing it again; rinse and repeat, Jeremy, just like the instructions on a shampoo bottle), he Reaches.

He Reaches and immediately wishes he hadn't. He Reaches and wants to flinch away. He Reaches and looks up into the mirror, fluorescent lights gleaming sickly off his sweat-shined skin, and he twirls around and.

And there's Jean.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's hints here about rape and physical abuse, but they're so vague and subtle that hopefully it doesn't bother anyone too much or you skip right over it

_NBC: Do you have anything to say about the names released to play for the US Court?_

_LEANDRO RODRIGO: I think everything has been said._

_NBC: You’ve caused quite the stir the last few years. Nowadays you can’t hear the word Exy without hearing about you: Leandro Rodrigo and company, a batch of undergraduates guaranteed to set foot on an Olympic court these upcoming Games._

_DMITRI ALPUENTE: I’m sorry, but is there a point to this?_

_NBC: How do you think you will stand your ground against players with far more experience?_

_LEANDRO RODRIGO: You forget that the trick isn’t to know your opponent._

**Rodrigo and Alpuente, Raven’s Backliner and Defensive Dealer, Post-Game Interview to NBC News.**

 

*******

 

Jeremy can’t breathe.

As he watches Jean -- on the floor, bloody and writhing -- he thinks about all the times he’s imagined seeing Jean again. Once, he imagined breaking through the wall between them and finding him on the other side, missing him the way Jeremy longed for him every day since 8th grade. Another time, he thought Jean would come for him, sorry without admitting it, and Jean would make the both of them forget how to breathe for a while, relieved into stillness.

Absurdly, Jeremy thinks about how lucky he is that he can rely on Jean to come through on some things.

His racquet falls to the floor with a nasty crack and, with it, so does Jeremy, hard and fast and awful.

(Natalie’s on the subway when she convulses, Nicky is in line at the airport, and Dan is working her shift, but all of them feel the same pull like they were just dropped from a very high place with a noose around their neck.)

The lights of the bathroom flicker and glimmer in turns, floor sticky and damp and too cold. Jeremy breaks his nails apart trying to dig them into the tiles. It feels like the force of the sun, blasted straight into his chest. It feels like being chained underwater. He makes a single, horrible choked-off gurgle.

When the pressure finally lifts, Jeremy sputters like a space heater, coughing. As he blinks away the spots in his vision, getting to his feet, Jean is nowhere to be found. He doesn’t have to check to know that the line is still cold.

Jean comes through on his promises.

 

***

 

Natalie shows up at her house at midnight with a liquor stain down the front of her shirt and probably reeking of whatever they were smoking in the car. She can hardly manage to turn the doorknob. The house is empty when she walks in, so she takes her time rummaging through the fridge before stumbling to her room.

Unsurprisingly, there’s already someone in there when she walks in -- sitting in Natalie’s bed with a flashlight pushed between her teeth, Allison is flipping through a magazine.

“Why is it,” says Natalie, and Allison’s head pivots, startled, “that every time I would want to see anyone but you, you’re the first one to show up.”

“Let me know when you figure it out,” Allison says. “Have you been drinking?”

Natalie shrugs, which makes her wince. Her back feels like it’s been ripped open from the inside, hot and needling. She can still feel Angelica’s manicured grip around her ankle.

(Sounding amused, she said, “Remember when she was just a pup,” her smile all teeth as she took a swig from the bottle of Visma she’d stolen from Natalie.

“Teething,” agreed -- someone. A low, deep-throated voice. Natalie, fog in her head and metal on her back, was grappling to make sense of anything at this point. “And angry. Chewed up anything left around.”

Pulling into the driveway, Angelica grabbed Natalie by the shoulder, pulled her close, and said “congratulations” sweetly smooth against Natalie’s ear before shoving her out the car.)

Allison looks down at her magazine. “Right.”

Natalie’s too drunk to take that as anything more than what it is. She grabs some clothes from her drawer and changes in her closet, hands clumsily searching for pants and a t-shirt in the dark. When she walks out, Allison is still on her bed.

“Fuck you, by the way,” she says. “I can feel some of it on my back. And it hurts.”

“Is that supposed to be my fault?”

“I’m not the one that got a tattoo.” Allison considers her. “It feels like a big one.”

“I don't care.”

“You're such a bore.”

“All right. Get the fuck out,” Natalie says, because in her head or not, she isn't sleeping with someone else in her bed.

“Gladly. You’re so wasted it’s practically contagious.”

Allison Crosses.

 

*******

 

The conference room reminds Allison of a game: checkerboard tiles, men dressed in black, the distant sound of a clock ticking. It’s all very war-like. There’s always a side and there’s always an enemy. There’s always a chess piece to win. There’s always someone who loses.

Allison has never played chess before.

“Miss Reynolds,” one of them says again. An aging, plain face. Allison hasn’t bothered to remember his name. She looks at him. “Are you aware of what you are doing? Do you know why we’re here?”

This room is new to the building, which means it’s bare other than the long table and a few chairs. The windows are a crack open, letting in a salty, hot smell, like sunscreen and hot sand. She tries to imagine what kind of curtains her parents would put in here and fails.

“Miss Reynolds.”

Allison looks away from the wall. “Is it because you’re looking to shut down a project I’ve been working on for the past three months,” she says, “or is it because spending my own money makes everyone at this table squirmish?”

“We have seen you work diligently on this project.”

“First, I’m here because I can’t be trusted with a simple magazine shoot. Now, I’ve been doing nothing but work. I need arguments against me to stay consistent, gentlemen. Pick one.”

Everyone’s attention starts and ends with her, like some great telescope eye focusing in, pinning her down. She knows what she must look like: inexperienced; cold; riding on the coattails of her parents success. _She’s a sandstorm_ , they say about her, _and she’s planning on burying us._

Allison thinks about that. She wonders how these tasteless old men would react to their first taste of bloodshed. It’d be amusing, at least for a little while.

“We don’t have to pick one,” a different man says this time. “If there’s anything you’re known for, Miss Reynolds, inconsistency would be it.”

“All right. So I’ve made this shoot just so I could act against my own self interests? Is that it?” she asks.

The room is silent.

“I’m floored.”

"You must understand --” they try, but Allison cuts them down. “I don’t have to do anything. If you want me off this project, feel free to talk to the people in charge. Otherwise, stop wasting my time, gentlemen.”

Of course, “people in charge” means her parents, and Allison watches as the man’s plain face twists, going bloodless. “Thank you. We’ll take that into account.”

“Uh-huh, right.” Then, flicking her fingers dismissively towards the windows, she goes, “Tell whoever’s responsible that I don’t want curtains in here,” and doesn’t wait for anyone to say anything else before she’s leaving.

 

***

 

(Allison thinks about how lucky she is, that she can count on her parent’s board to come through on their promises.)

 

***

 

Dan puts up her apron in the backroom, massaging a knot out of her neck. It’s been a long night, and she still has homework to catch up on when she gets home. She waits until the rest of the waitresses file out, taking their tacky perfume with them, before she asks, “Is there a reason why you’ve been following me around for the last hour?”

“Is it technically following,” says the empty room behind her, “if I’m not really here in the first place?”

Dan turns. Nicky is sitting on the foldable table the girls break out during lunch, swinging his legs back and forth under him. He’s gotten too skinny over the last few months, and Dan eyes his long sleeves suspiciously.

“You know, it’s too warm out to be wearing sweaters yet,” she says casually.

“You know, it’s illegal to be working at a bar at sixteen,” he bites back, because Nicky has never been subtle a day in his life.

Dan has an agreement with the owner: she offers an extra hand a few odd hours every other night, and in return, she’ll be allowed to apply for the entertainment in the winter. Her stare on him goes cold as she shrugs. “Is it?” Silence. “What are you doing here, Hemmick?”

“I’m leaving for Germany tomorrow.”

“Okay,” says Dan, and adds, because she means it, “I’m happy for you.”

“What if I regret it?”

“I think you’ll regret it more if you stay.”

This is the hard part about being a sensate: you start to forget which feelings are yours, sometimes. Her mind hasn’t been completely hers since she was nine-years-old and something hollowed her out and left her with a feeling of displacement, meaning the sensation that she is no longer where she started.

She feels too aware of her own body. Thoughts pass her by faster than she can make sense of them.

There’s a long moment where neither of them say anything, but somehow it’s still filled with noise.

Finally, Dan says, “I have a lot of work to do tonight.”

Nicky takes the hint. He ducks his head, hands clasped together, thumb on top. Even her awareness of him flickers, the line between them distorted. Dan wonders if Nicky knows that he follows a whole unconscious routine when he’s trying to swallow down his disappointment.

“I really need someone to keep me company so I don’t fall asleep,” she tells him.  

Nicky -- very, very slowly -- turns his body back towards her. She can feel his relief like a lightbulb in her chest. “All right. Sure.”

 

*******

 

Nicky’s first kiss happened when he was fourteen. It was at his cousin’s house, a friend-of-a-friend’s graduation party, and there was a boy named Sebastian that was making Nicky’s heart beat in his throat. When Nicky told him he liked his shoes, Sebastian laughed, delighted, before backing him up into a closed room and kissing him full on the mouth, hands a contact burn on Nicky’s face.

In Germany, nearly four years later, when he’s paddling down the Regnitz in the sunny, Miami-like German heat and a canoe with a large bag of food -- he’d made fun of Erik the entire time he was packing it, saying there was no reason they needed so much food for a two hour ride --against his back, Erik nearly falls out of his seat as he stumbles his way towards Nicky’s mouth.

It’s still open from Nicky laughing at something Erik was saying and their teeth click. It feels like a first kiss, the way Nicky freezes, and Erik looks unsure of what to do with his hands, uncertain and shy. He stares at Nicky, brown eyes blown wide open. Then Nicky fits his mouth more comfortably to Erik’s, closing his eyes, and the world shifts on its axis.

Erik touches the space right above Nicky’s collarbone. Nicky bites down on his lower lip. A noise leaves Erik’s throat. Erik’s body soaks him with warmth and Nicky presses himself against it.

“Fuck life jackets,” Erik murmurs. His lips brush against Nicky’s with every word. Erik pulls at a strap on his jacket and Nicky, surprised, falls forward and knocks his forehead against Erik’s.

Nicky breaks away completely, laughing and feeling like he’s never laughed before in his life. Or maybe that's just how it feels to laugh after being kissed in broad daylight, sunlight glimmering across the surface of a lake like a ripple. He likes the flavor it leaves behind. Erik grabs him by the back of the neck and licks the taste of it from the back of Nicky’s teeth.

“Your idea of a romantic gesture?” he asks, breathless.

Erik looks around at the bag dropped on its side at the bottom of the canoe and the dark spots on their clothes where water splashed at them while Erik kissed him.

“Actually, yes,” says Erik. “Frankly, I thought it was rather clever.”

Once they’re unloading their things at the dock much, much later, Nicky sees Dan waiting by the ladder.

Erik has his back turned, talking to the man securing the canoe, so Nicky waves. After a moment, Dan waves back.

 

***

 

Each time he looks at her, each time he touches her, it gets worse.

This time, it feels like someone making her drink toxic waste.

Angelica looks at her afterwards, her eyes bright and knowing. Natalie doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol that keeps her from talking or if she isn’t as stupid as she seems, but for once in her life, she doesn’t provoke her. She walks away without a word. It’s a smart decision; Natalie feels murderous.

The house is practically empty that night. The only noise comes from her mother’s bedroom. Natalie takes a minute to look around for her mother’s boyfriend, knife under her sleeve, before going to her room and locking the door behind her.

In the shower, she scrubs at her skin until it’s raw.

This goes on for a while.

 

***

 

Nicky missed the bus. Not the first time it’s happened (German is a third language, after all, and Nicky isn't always completely sure what the schedules are getting at) but this time, Erik will be bound to worry.

Potsdam is not all that different from Bamberg, except for maybe a few more tourists than Nicky’s used to. They have the same large, pointed buildings and roofs the color of spiced rum; bakeries that sell brioche still hot through brown paper; people who cycle down the cobblestone streets; and the best brandy Nicky’s ever tasted.

(Still. He misses the river.)

But Potsdam is still new territory for Nicky, who’s never been outside Bamberg during all of his time in Germany. He’s excited, wants to see and experience everything all at once, which is why he told Erik back in the hotel room that he’d go down to the convenience store on his own. It’s only a block away, and besides, Erik was tired after an entire day of sightseeing.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll go,” Erik said, who hadn’t moved from the mattress in the last twenty minutes. “I don’t want you getting lost.”

“For your information, I once single-handedly kept us from getting stuck in the mountains,” Nicky lied as he pulled on his shoes. He’d only known which way was east back towards the hiking trail because Nathaniel knew.

“Doesn’t count. That was all luck.” Erik angled his head and looked at Nicky. “You could get lost in a paper bag.”

“One block,” Nicky had repeated. “I saw it on our way back. Ten minutes, tops.”

“My parents will be upset.”

“Your parents went out for dinner, and they’ll be back late.” Nicky said again, “Ten minutes.”

Finally, Erik gave in, pulled Nicky into a sweet kiss, and said yes.

Then Nicky realized the street was farther away than he thought it was. A quick bus stop away. Twenty minutes if he hurried and caught the very next stop. Erik would worry for a while, but ten more minutes wouldn’t cost either of them anything.

Now Nicky is sitting on a warm metal bench as the sky turns pink, the wine bottles and frosted cookies clinking together in the shopping bag. The streets here are busier than he’s seen in all his time in Germany. Muffled noise and dimmed lights. People’s voices clear and unclear at the same time. Like watching a dream from underwater.

“Wow,” says a voice, breathless, and Nicky turns, startled. “I haven’t seen the sky like this in years.” A woman is sitting on the other side of the bench. He hadn’t even noticed her when he sat down. “I almost forgot it could turn different colors. It’s gorgeous.”   

Nicky blinks, glancing up. Then, because it’s polite, he says, “Oh. Yeah. You’re right," not really paying attention.

She turns to him -- dark eyes and long eyelashes and a silver scar running from her eyebrow to her chin, like a crack in the earth -- and tells him, “You don’t mean that.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You look, but you’re not really looking.” She slides down closer, her skirts sweeping across the floor, until her shoulder bumps into Nicky’s. She grabs Nicky’s arm and Nicky -- confused -- lets her.

“See the claw marks in the clouds?” She points his finger at the purple foam above their heads. “And the color down to the horizon?”

“Yeah.”

“It makes you feel young again, doesn’t it?”

Nicky remembers going out to the fairs with his parents, vanilla ice-cream making his lips stick to his teeth, and his mother saying _Nicholas, what do you see, tell me what you see, sweetheart,_ and Nicky smacking his lips together, tasting the sugar in his smile as he reared his head and said _a caterpillar hiding in the grass._ He remembers the smell of cooking meat. He remembers the sound of fireworks cracking. He remembers how the heat turned the sky orange as the sun fell away. “Yes. Yeah. I see it.”

When Nicky looks at her again, her mouth tugs upward, pleased. “You’re very warm.”

“Oh.” Nicky pulls his arm back. “So are you.”

Then she laughs, head thrown back, fingers loose and easy around her mouth. “That’s not what I meant.”

Nicky doesn’t get the chance to ask her what she meant before the laughter fizzes out. “I used to play here, when I was little. With my father. He loved the city. He’d buy me treats from the vendors, take me on his shoulders. It’s changed so much since then.” The cars of the city seem to go quiet, the people walking up and down the streets going still. The world is focused in on her like a great telescope when she tells him, “This is the place I’d want to die in.”

His eyebrows pull downwards, mouth stretching in surprise. He blinks, not knowing what to say.

“But it won’t be here. I know that. But at least I got to see the sun one more time before it left.” She turns to him, taking him by the hand, and Nicky nearly has to bite his cheek to keep from pulling away. Her hands are cold. “I want to thank you, for letting me see it.”

He hears himself say, “You’re welcome,” then, “listen, is there anything -- I want to help you.”

She twinkles with amusement. “You’ve reminded me what it’s like to be warm again. That’s enough.”

Nicky experiences a displacement in time as she stands, watching -- always watching -- and steps into the street.

“Wait,” Nicky says, then, louder, “ _wait!_ ”

A hook behind Nicky’s belly button pulls, violent, hot-cold, a flash of colors and the taste of vomit and metal and --

\-- and he’s back on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, as if he’d never left.

 

***

 

Meanwhile, across the continent, just outside Zacatecas, Nathaniel is pointing a gun at the strange woman standing in his apartment. Clicking off the safety, he says, “Who are you?”

“You’re not on Blockers,” she says. A provencal accent, smooth as glass. “That is surprising.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Doesn’t it?” She considers him for a moment. “I’m like you.”

Nathaniel has to tilt his chin up to look at her. Like his mother, he’s always been the smallest one in a room. But his mother works it to her advantage, makes herself as compact and dangerous as an atomic bomb, so he makes his voice cold when he says, “I’m not going to ask you again. What are you doing here? Who are you?”

“I’m not here to kill you.”

“Am I supposed to just take your word for it?”

“I’m here to warn you.”

“Warn me,” he says.

“A friend asked me to tell you that you’re too close to them here,” she says, and Nathaniel lets his gun lower an inch, confused. She makes as if to leave, even though Nathaniel and a glock stand between her and the door.

He moves in closer to her. “I can’t let you leave.”

“You aren’t in the position to ‘let me’ do anything.”

He puts his gun on full display, letting her see it. “Between the two of us, I’m the only one armed. You forget that I have the upper hand.”

She smiles, then. Red lipstick and canine teeth. “You still don’t get it. To be young, indeed.”

“Don’t get what, exactly?” He says, annoyed. His mother is still asleep in the bedroom. He can’t let this woman leave and he knows it. He’s trying to think of what his mother would do in this situation, if he should shoot her (he’s never shot a gun before), or if he should go for the knives and pin her down, stomach churning at the thought -- when he remembers something. “Wait, who’s ‘they’?”

The woman looks at him like she thinks he’s stupid. “The Cannibal,” she drawls. “Stay on your Blockers 24/7, kid. They’re hunting.”

Realization only dawns on Nathaniel once she Crosses, disappearing completely.

 

***

 

Tilda dies on a Sunday, just after she tries to put her hands on Andrew and he makes the car spin off the road.

(It’ll end up as shards of metal on the side of the road, tipped over, smoke coming from the engine, though Andrew can hardly remember it: a kaleidoscope of colors, blood on his face, seatbelt a burn against his collarbone, and Tilda rammed through the window shield.)

But for now, Tilda stares at him, then at the hand gripping her wrist, her hand stopped halfway through a swing, then -- with wide eyes -- back at Andrew. “Andrew,” she says, caught in surprise and trying to keep it off her face, though she’s bad at it. “Let go of me.”

“I told you never to touch him again.” His foot goes heavy against the gas pedal. The car hiccups with it, pulled forward. “I told you what would happen but you did not take me seriously.”

“Stop it.”

“Yet you take me seriously now.”

It’s simple physics. A force won’t stop until an outside force digs its teeth in and changes its direction. Tilda should’ve known better than to think it would be her.

“Andrew,” she says again. “Let go.”

He does.

 

***

 

A week later, Erik grabs Nicky by the elbow, pulling him into his orbit, and says, “You don’t have to go.”

Nicky breaks away from him, stuffing the rest of his shirts into his suitcase. “You know I do. They’re kids, Erik.”

Softly, “I know how much this means to you, but for your sake --”

“This isn’t about me!” Tension has been building under Nicky’s skin for the last week. He hasn’t left Germany for a while, and in fourteen hours, he’ll be closer than he’s been to his parents for a long time. It makes his skin itch. “If I don’t take them, Erik, my parents will, and I can’t -- I can’t do that. I won’t.” He takes a deep, steadying breath. “I’m going.”

It nearly kills Nicky to hand the woman at the counter his ticket, having to let go of Erik’s hand to grab his suitcase at the terminals. It nearly kills Erik, too, by the way he pulls Nicky in by his coat lapels for a long, hard kiss.

“Let me go with you,” he says.

“Don’t be silly, Erik.” Nicky searches his face. “This is your home. You can’t leave it.”

“Home is wherever you are,” Erik says. He pulls him in again, because that is how they’ve always worked around each other, like planets pulling each other into their gravities. For a single, glorious moment, Nicky relishes in the feeling of being able to crowd into Erik’s space as he presses his lips against Nicky’s hairline.

Then he pulls away, shaking his head. “No.”

After a beat, Erik lets out a breath, pulling back. “Promise you’ll come back to me, then,” he murmurs. “Please, I -- just come back.”

Nicky stops. “I will,” is what comes out of him, and then, as if he’s ripping out a part of his chest, lets go.

 

***

 

Jeremy’s mother dies on a Sunday, after a car the color of sunflowers collides with the side of theirs.

(Their car was red, old and breaking enough to almost pass for brown. Maybe if it had been white the car would’ve floated in the air like a balloon. Like a cloud rising from the ground.)

Jeremy only had to get a few stitches on his chin, and his sister got a cut on her head that looked worse than it really was. But she’d looked tired: heavy-lidded, blood in her hair, and barely speaking. Jeremy remembers catching her sobbing by the vending machine, hitting the sole of her palm hard on all the buttons, her grief a heat wave, before falling to the ground.

“I’m going to take care of us, Jer,” she said to him, voice wrecked, after she caught Jeremy watching. He was in second grade, then, and the twins were still learning how to walk, and he had no idea how hard it was going to be for them for the next few years. So Jeremy nodded, picked out the M&Ms from the bottom of the vending machine, and sat down next to her.

 

***

 

There’s an acidic taste at the back of Natalie’s throat. When she looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, her skin gleaming with sweat under the flickering light, she applies her fingertips to the back of her shoulder, tracing what she finds.

The wings look like a dragon’s -- sharp bones and tattered cartilage. They look like the wings of a dead thing.

Natalie thinks about her empty house, about how she always has to keep her door locked, about the drugs in her mother’s nightstand drawer and the matching ones in Natalie’s coat pockets, about how much he likes knives, and the one Natalie carries around with her but doesn’t know how to use.

She thinks about all of this as she pulls it out from her sleeve. Her grip on the handle feels strange at first, then she adjusts, because that’s what people like Natalie have to do: adapt. She’s been playing a game she hasn’t realized she’s been losing.

After a moment, Natalie places the razor edge of the knife against the mirror, right where her reflection looks back at her. When she slices across the glass, the sound it makes makes her teeth grind together. So she does it again, and again, and again.

(Allison will look at it the next morning, impassive. At her elbow, Natalie will be brushing her teeth, ignoring her. _Okay, I’ll bite,_ she’ll say. _Why?_

Natalie looks up. The lines cut right across her left eye, so all there is is sunken, cracked glass. _An eye for an eye,_ she murmurs.)

 

***

 

“Miss Shields,” is said again. She turns to see an aging, plain face. She hasn’t bothered to remember his name. “Do you understand your situation? Do you know why you’re here?”

The curtains are pulled back from the windows, letting in the white light of a December morning. It’s going to be the last time in a while that she’ll be allowed to see the way the cold frosts over glass like a thin sheet, crystallized. She expects to commit it all to memory, put her fingertips against the cold. Instead, all she feels is bored.

“Miss Shields.”

“My mother is a junkie and her shit ass boyfriend is a dealer, and I’m here,” says Natalie, “because I was arrested for illegal drug use and being in a gang after I made sure all of them were sent to prison.”

The man says, “I’m not here as your enemy.”

Natalie turns back towards the window. The man clears his throat. “Natalie is a gorgeous name. I know this one other girl, you know, from Gumi --”

“I’m from Detroit,” she cuts in, mouth twisted.

The man shifts, uncomfortable. It’s pathetic to watch his face color, caught in surprise. “Ms. Shields,” he tries, but Natalie snaps, “Can I leave now?”

He sighs. “Miss Shields -- ”

She doesn’t wait for him to finish. “Thanks,” Natalie says in the voice people use when they mean the opposite, letting the door hang ajar on her way out.

 

*******

 

One second, Allison is shooting balls into a goal so hard her wrists were starting to cramp, and the next she’s facing the bare wall of a gray cell.

Allison bristles. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she says, just as another muffled voice says, with feeling, “What the fuck?”

Natalie is sitting on her rickety bed, cross-legged, with her hair pulled up and out of her face for the first time since Allison met her. She allows herself to stare for a moment longer before turning to Dan, who is the last person Allison expected to see.

“Allison.” Dan nods at her. Then she blinks. “Hello, Natalie.”

“Hi,” is all she says, impassive. “Will you leave my fucking cell now.”

“Trust me, I didn’t come here on purpose,” Allison snaps.

Natalie bares her teeth at her. “Could you stop being prissy for one second, or is that just part of the rich girl routine?”

Voice mild, she answers, “What’s your excuse?”

“You know what your problem is, Allison --”

“ _No_ ,” rips out of her, voice gone hard, “ _you_ have to stop pretending like you know me, like you know about all my problems. You wanna talk about problems? We can talk.”

Her legs eat up the space between them until she looms over Natalie, who stares up at her, eyes _searing_ and body pulled tight as a strung bow, refusing to back away. Allison smiles at her, sweet. “How does it feel to have spent six years of your life wasting away on drugs, and all for nothing, in the end. Do you realize that? You killed people for your immature, childish wish for a family.”

“Shut up.”

“Please, Natalie," she goes on, merciless, "If good things ever happened to us, we wouldn’t be stuck with each other.”

“You don’t know _anything_ about me.”

“Funny,” says Allison, “considering you apparently know everything about me. Grow up, Shields, or at least grow a backbone.”

Dan shoves her way between them, making Allison stumble backwards a few steps, shocked. She’d forgotten Dan was there. “That’s enough,” she tells them, then, to Allison, “calm down.”

“I wasn’t finished,” she points out.

“Finished doing what? Trying to put her under your shoe? Calm down.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Natalie snaps at her.

“The same goes for you,” Dan fires back. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Calm down, says the girl who lives her life angry,” Allison huffs, getting to her feet. “You think we don’t know? It’s not a secret. You’re idea of moving forward is by running on a hamster wheel, Dan, and getting frustrated that you stay stationary.”

“You’re angry, Allison. Stop it.”

Allison doesn’t stop. “You try to help others when you can’t even help yourself. I’m sure you have a very fun story about why.”

All of them are silent for a while. The air between them rattles.

“There," says Dan, quiet enough that Allison can't believe she heard her. "You wanted to hurt me, and now you did. Are you satisfied?”

“No.”

“Feel free to leave, then.” She takes one, two, three steps closer. “By the way, you might want to follow your own advice." 

Allison doesn’t know how she does it, but when Dan shoves her backwards, Allison stumbles into the Court, bright lights on her face and Dan's voice a ricochet in her head, louder than a gunshot.

 

*******

 

BREAKING NEWS: Leandro Rodrigo found dead in hotel room in Honduras - cnn.com

Leandro Rodrigo’s Suicide Days Before Olympic Match - huffingtonpost.com

 

_Ximena Marquez: I think the stress was starting to get to him. Can you imagine it? Twenty years old and the Exy world’s attention all on you. I don’t think people talk about that kind of strain enough. [Sigh] Twenty years old._

_Dulce Noah: I think you have a point, but there’s also a lot we didn’t know about Rodrigo._

_XM: What’s your point?_

_DN: It’s just that we all thought we knew these boys. We think we do now. That’s the scary part, isn’t it? Besides his death, I think the worst part is that this is going to become a story. We’re going to assume we know when we don’t. We have no clue._

_XM: Yeah. Really makes you wonder what they tell you in the big leagues._

_DN: [Laughs] Yeah. Makes you wonder._

**Excerpt from Despierta America on the Olympic Games**

 

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me at quensty.tumblr.com if, you know, you're into that sort of thing


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